This time of year always spurs thoughts of my first job as a college graduate. I remember how excited I felt when I left for New Hampshire that September morning. Once I made it to the Thruway near Rochester, even the off-and-on light showers, normally a nuisance for hitchhikers, could douse my enthusiasm,

No, I wasn’t driving in my new car to start a lucrative career. My ’64 Valiant was on injury reserve until I could get some cash together, so there I was, thumb out, off to pick apples for the season at Sawyer’s Orchards in Salisbury, N.H.

I had cut a lot of grass, and I tried digging potatoes once, but apples were a first. A college roommate heard from a friend about the orchard, whose owner hired a bunch of so-called hippies every fall to pick his apples, with free room in a bunkhouse.

Of course, my parents couldn’t understand why I would go to college and then go do seasonal work on a farm.

It took a philosophy degree to get a job picking apples, my puzzled mother questioned.

I would answer, ``well, actually, in some ways it did."

It took me 24 hours to get to the orchard, after being stranded for hours on the desolate mountain between Bennington and Brattleboro in Vermont. Later, some college students picked me up in Henniker, N.H., and said I could stay at their place for the night.

It was a chilly and rainy Saturday morning when I reached Concord and headed up Route 3 and then Route 4 the 15 miles to Salisbury, which turned out to be a hamlet nestled in mountainous countryside just beginning to bloom in fall colors.

Because of the showers, everybody was lounging around the bunkhouse when I arrived, soaking wet. My buddy Murphy was there, a bunch of his old friends from Rockaway Beach, a few other guys and a couple of girls. About 10 people in all. It turned out the women were friends just visiting for the weekend, so I found out early on that there was going to be a lot of male energy in the bunkhouse.

The guys were all unique characters, from B-Man, the youngest, who was reading ``On the Road" and couldn’t wait for picking to be over so he could hit the highway, to Jumpin’ Joe, who taught English in Manhattan until he became disillusioned with inner-city youth.

I would have to wait a day for the sun to display the beauty of the various orchards laid out around the hundreds of acres on the Sawyer spread. And I learned how to pick apples. All you needed was a bushel bucket attached to a shoulder strap and a ladder with one end tapered so it would fit into the crotch of two branches of an apple tree.

But I learned you don’t just climb up, start grabbing apples and toss them into the bucket. You have to make sure when you pick them that the stems remain with the apples because they stay fresh longer that way. And, of course, you have to prevent bruising, which requires care both in the picking and in the transfer to buckets, boxes and baskets.

I don’t recall the pay per bushel, but most of us made $40 to $60 a week.

Each orchard had its variety. There were Macs, Cortlands, Empires, Delicious and others. I liked the Cortlands because they didn’t bruise as easily and for their taste.

The Sawyers were Ed and Bev and their two daughters, Mandy and Heidi. Some of the guys had been there before, picking for their second or even third year, so the girls, in their early teens, would often visit the bunkhouse and add some hilarious diversion after a boring day on a ladder, picking. We also played a lot of hearts that season to pass the time at night.

The nightly meals were an adventure all their own. Everyone was vegetarian, so boiled vegetables and rice were a staple. I haven’t eaten turnips since then, and never will again.

One picker, Tim, was from California and half way through the season his brother, known only as Sahib, visited _ for a few weeks. I remember that one day he did some LSD and came back from a walk in the orchards with vivid descriptions of bright red apples saying ``pick me, pick me."

The meager shower in the bunkhouse produced hardly a drip, so every Wednesday night we all would climb into someone’s van and drive into Concord for open basketball at the YMCA. What a motley crew we must have looked like walking in, changing and hitting the court. But the showers were great.

By November, the apples were all picked and the water line to the bunkhouse was frozen until spring, but some of us stayed to gather drops for cider. It was cold, and crawling around under the trees for fallen apples wasn’t as pleasant as picking them.

Eventually, only a few of us remained and Ed and Bev allowed us to stay in the bunkhouse while we worked elsewhere, trying to get enough money together to go south. When we finally left, we realized _ long before the book was written _ that this cider house had no rules _ and it was better that way.

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Cary Brunswick, managing editor of The Daily Star, can be reached at (607) 432-1000, ext. 217, or cary@thedailystar.com.